Sudan: Starvation Threatens Millions As Civil War Rages On

In war-torn Sudan, 25 million people face hunger, well over half of the country’s population. About 18 million are acutely food insecure, including 3.8 million malnourished children under five years old.

Over a dozen children are dying of hunger daily in Zamzam camp, Adam Rojal, spokesperson of the General Coordination of Darfur Displaced People and Refugees, told Peoples Dispatch. The camp, which hosts over 300,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), is near North Darfur state’s capital city Al-Fashir.

Doctors without Borders estimates that a quarter of the children in this camp are acutely malnourished, and will die “within weeks” in the absence of urgent medical intervention.

Weakened by severe malnutrition, “children and pregnant women are also dying on a daily basis without any healthcare in the Kalma IDP camp” in South Darfur, on the outskirts of that state’s capital city Nyala, Rojal said.

Peter Graaff, acting World Health Organization (WHO) representative to Sudan, warned in mid-February 2024 that “200,000 children are projected to suffer from life-threatening hunger this year” in the five states of Darfur.

IDPs in these regions have been surviving on food aid from the UN World Food Program. “These food rations stopped” after the ongoing war broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, Rojal said.